As we mentioned yesterday, it’s Spiel des Jahres season. We all know what that means, of course. The three Spiel des Jahres awards are still among the most prestigious in the world, and winning them is still a big deal. We already presented the nominees and jury’s recommendation for the Spiel des Jahres award yesterday, today we’ll have a look at the Kennerspiel. Without any further ado, here we go.

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Kingsburg is a medieval dice-fest about building up your shire (no, not The Shire, but you can always add a bit of roleplay if you want) and defeating demons and dragons that attack each winter, all through bribery at the court. It seems the ends do justify the means here.

We all have played Cops and Robbers as kids. Pretty much all of us forgot the simple joy of pointing a toy gun at our friends and yelling "Bang! Bang! You’re dead!" Cash’n’Guns skips the cops for most of the game. but the robbers and toy guns are there.

Some might find a game where one player is literally Hitler offensive. I’m not one of them, and I’m glad, because that would keep me from a great hidden identity game that has tiny bit more structure than other games in that genre. At least for me it makes a huge difference.

Evolution is one of the more vicious card games out there – eating your opponents animals is a great survival strategy. But the game’s author is a biologist by trade, so at least it is scientifically acurate viciousness.

Every year Fragor Games releases one game, designed by the Lamont brothers and produced with ridiculously pretty ceramic miniatures. Last year, that game was A Game of Gnomes. It’s what it says on the box: a game, and about gnomes. Except the title and some puns in the rule book, it has nothing to do with that other A Game of …. Something that everyone is talking about, but it has a lot to do with mushrooms. And it has the largest single component in any game we have here at the Meeple Cave.

Some games are huge and take a long time to play. Others are smaller and quicker. And then there are some games that advertise themselves as mini games: small box, small rules, short play time – all the fun. Iello have their own product line of such games, and Welcome to the Dungeon is one of them. A quick and simple bluffing game that has little in common with dungeon crawling style games, you will try to get the hero killed more often than you help him succeed.

The right combination of two familiar game mechanics can create something new and fun. Sea of Clouds combines a drafting game with a press-your-luck mechanic. If you enjoy only one of those, then this game is definitely worth your time because it combines the best parts of them. And it does that while letting you loot the skies as a flying pirate, if you needed any more convincing.